On Computers: Amazon’s Cloud Drive experiment shows success

Monday

Amazon.com’s Cloud Drive experiment, which offers users 5 gigabytes of storage free on its massive server, is a success. The company says it is helping drive sales of MP3 music.

If you thought “cloud computing” was only for businesses, take a deep breath and rethink.

Amazon.com’s Cloud Drive experiment, which offers users 5 gigabytes of storage free on its massive server, is a success. The company says it is helping drive sales of MP3 music.

There’s nothing new about cloud computing. It’s the old practice of running software on a networked server instead of on individual PCs. But the idea gets new thrust as software makers consider renting us their goods, similar to a software license. The plan has advantages for consumers.

There would be no more expensive program updates, no need for huge hard drives and the end of having to back up data. The big advantage is data stored on a cloud may be accessed by any of your computers or cell phones via password. Plus, you can use your data worldwide.

Amazon’s deal is 5 gigabytes of storage for free plus all the music you buy from them. If you buy an album (about $10), you get a free 20 gigabytes. If you need more, you pay for it. All sorts of data may be stored, sent on PCs or Android phones.

As usual, the music industry screamed, claiming Amazon owes them royalties for streaming their music, just as a radio station would. These guys have opposed every high-tech revolution in their business.

Let’s see. We’ve bought the music. Then we’d have to pay to play it. Does that make any sense? It does to the record bigs.

Amazon counters it’s only providing a storage system for access to the data. Still, users will get the free Amazon Cloud Player, a playback application similar to Windows Media Player.

Amazon is basic cloud. If you want file sharing and synching among other computers, you need Microsoft’s Windows Live SkyDrive or Google Docs. If consumer cloud computing becomes popular, we’ll see more “thin client” computers available. These are cheap systems with few features and very small hard drives. All they do is connect to the cloud, where their applications reside.

High bandwidth Internet enables the cloud concept. If you still have a phone modem, it will take all day to load 2 gigs of music.

Security is the question yet to be proven. Can hackers break into the cloud and steal our data? Cloud makers are quiet about this, so users can only hope their security goes beyond passwords.

Sign up for free space at www.Amazon.com (click on “Help,” then “Cloud Drive Support”), www.skydrive.live.com or www.docs.google.com.

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